A US federal research institute announced Friday that it is developing a strain of the novel coronavirus that may one day be deliberately injected into volunteers to see if experimental vaccines are working. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), headed by Dr Anthony Fauci, said it has "started a project to make a strain that could be used to develop a model of human experimental infection, if necessary ".
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In a normal clinical trial, volunteers are given an experimental vaccine or a placebo, and are followed for months or years to see if they are naturally contaminated with the circulating virus. This takes time, and experts have been proposing since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic a faster route, already used for influenza, malaria, typhoid fever, dengue fever and cholera: inject the experimental vaccine, then the coronavirus. The 1DaySooner group is particularly campaigning for this method.
Not before the end of the year
But unlike the above diseases, doctors still know little about treating Covid-19 patients, which makes these experiments dangerous. The institute has not made a decision, and is only expected to do so at the end of the year, when the results of final phase clinical trials for three advanced coronavirus vaccine projects (AstraZeneca, Moderna, Pfizer ) should be known.
David Diemert, director of the unit leading vaccine trials at George Washington University, and in particular the Moderna vaccine trial in Washington, told AFP that he was opposed to this type of experiment for Covid-19. “Our knowledge is limited,” explains the doctor. We do not have a cure that guarantees that someone who becomes seriously ill can be cured. "
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